How did people buy bitcoin and other cryptos back in the old days?

[Noctis Connor]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

Well in my country we already had the wallet where you can use your debit or credit card to buy bitcoin since they will give you the account where you can deposit the money and wait for 12 hours before you can received your bitcoin , but some how i can earn bitcoin from airdrops where i can get them for free and of course with the help of this forum you can learn everything from here not just to earn bitcoin from the campaign but to learn and stand on your own and it is for you to decide whether you wanna sell your bitcoin or just reinvest it into another coins.

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[mersal]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

I used LBC to buy bitcoins when there is no enforced KYC requirements to trade there and it was most reliable at that time because most exchanges didn't have fiat deposit for many countries after that 2017 lot of local exchanges popped up so we can get better deals for fiat than LBC in the recent times.

I used LocalBitcoins for my first purchased Bitcoins too. In fact, everyone should create good trading relationships from the P2P marketplaces. One day, you won’t be needing the platform to trade with one another. It would be a simple peer to peer transfer, preferably in person.

Good trading history and trading with someone who is actively trading should be important when we trade on p2p because people sometimes go for the higher price offer and end up getting receive money from hacked bank account which is one of the issues when we are trading with p2p.

[abel1337]

On my first experience in accumulating BTC, I only do faucets way back in 2014, and in 2015 we have coins.ph wallet which enables us to buy bitcoin with ease without the risk of getting scammed in the process. One of the amazing features about it is we can pay in cash! and the handicap of not having a debit or credit card is not a hindrance to buying bitcoin. Actually in our country, coins.ph before is more well known than localbitcoins because of the multiple functionalities of that wallet.

[jostorres]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

People do use P2P even to this day, there are lots of people who use P2P in many nations that banned bitcoin, look at what Nigeria is going through right now, central bank banned bitcoin related moves for Banks and banks stopped working with places that deals with bitcoin so right now no bank would allow you to do something like that. Which is why people are moving towards P2P and they are giving cash to each other and receiving bitcoin, that is how they are dealing in 2021 today, you think we couldn't figure it out 10 years ago?

I remember vividly that I did multiple deals with people, I sent them bitcoin and they have wired me money to my bank account, it wasn't really an anon way to do it since I got all of his information including name and account numbers and so forth but in the end who cares? We just did it anyway and as you can see I didn't use that information since I didn't cared.

[Yatsan]

I certainly do not have idea on how they are doing it on the old days but for sure it might be hard compared to as of now. But I have been hearing news about crypto existence way back then from my seniors who have mentored me about cryptocurrency and based on them, P2P is the most common way on acquiring Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency way back then. Processes and transactions way back then are not to be worried that much for the value of crypto is not that big so scammers are still not around as well as hackers to be a hindrance and no trust issues are there for transactions not to become successful compared to now that there are lots of risks associated on doing transactions upon purchasing that you must only buy on legible exchanges or else you will get your money busted turning it into nothing at all.

[MIner1448]

Bitcoin was publicly available sometime in 2012, it appeared on exchanges in 2013-2014.
Immediately after 2013, his hype began to grow instantly and capitalization also grew at a tremendous rate of growth. I think the beginning of the peak of Bitcoin is 2012-2014, these years almost all experienced people have already spoken about it.

[tygeade]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

People used to buy and sell P2P on the forum and I believe that was how the forum was introduced basically to fulfill the needs of buy and the sellers. I was checking old threads in meantime and when I saw This Thread and many others like this, I was into tears that why I was not here and bought some when such deals were being offered.

When I first came here though, there were enough sites which offered bitcoins purchase and selling, like btc-e was one of the biggest sites back then and although I never used, mt gox was considered a giant and it actually was as market crashed when they closed.

[isaac_clarke22]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

I believe personal transactions were done back then before even tech-savvy people look into it making it convenient to buy one. I started to get into Bitcoin back in 2017 and I registered here late the same year. If you're still curious how did I bought mine, it was through convenience store payment. Pretty convenient (heh) .

[Jemzx00]

Other than P2P transaction, there are variety of ways that people acquire and bought bitcoin back then. Also, there are few crypto exchange that were already founded such as the famous Mt.Gox. (we all know what happened to mt.gox)

Another way to buy bitcoin is through LocalBitcoins which I've used for the first bought bitcoins that I've have until I switched to easier and convenient site such as Coins but by this time there are already a lot of exchanges and ways to buy bitcoin.   

[Lanatsa]

Talking into those early days even though im not that early on engaging the market but with some google search then this is mostly done with p2p and soon when

recognition had risen up then exchangers do really come out like Mt.Gox. Only to those old time engagers on this forum are aware on what actually happened that
time in terms of exchanging and purchasing out coins.

Knowing that bitcoin can be still mined using up your own pc since difficulty isn't really that high for you to mine.

[BurtW]

Five words for you:  Magic The Gathering Online eXchange

[konflikkastil]

I think it was not that hard when I started buying BTC, it has been so easy that you can buy from someone and ha- ve sent to your wallet address. That's what we call P2P transaction today. The whole transaction has to be based on trust. You have to trust the other people person at the receiving end and sending end. Though, I once fell victim of scam along, buy it was just once. Close to $200 worth of a coin called Nob$. It was an experience I will never forget, I guess it was one of the few lessons have learnt in crypto. Things has been easy now, that you can sell your coins and get the money directly into your local bank account.

[cyriljundos]

if you watch the documentary "banking on bitcoin" in that movie shows people selling bitcoin in the us in a small value. i think you should watch that video. i started bitcoin since 2017 and trading alt coins. its been a zigzag and rough for us traders because the value of btc that time is quite low and if i get profit that time is too small but at least bitcoin price now is higher .

[jerry0]

Where did people keep their bitcoin back then?  Was it on exchange?  When did those wallets suddenly appeared?  I assume many used bitcoin core right?  Then electrum?

[trigger1975]

In 2012, there was this site where you could buy Second Life's Linden Dollars for USD (credit card) and convert them to BTC. It was fucking expensive but that days the fastest way to convert fiat to coins. Also I've used local coins a lot to trade fiat for coins.

[livingfree]

Where did people keep their bitcoin back then?  Was it on exchange?  When did those wallets suddenly appeared?  I assume many used bitcoin core right?  Then electrum?

Mostly everyone is just mining from 2009-2011 and there were even faucets that have given a lot of bitcoin, thanks to Gavin.

But if you take back and read, there were exchanges back then. That's the story of MtGox got in and you have to google the story to know it. It's sentimental if you read those posts from the early people on how did they got their bitcoins back then.

[xSkylarx]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

I found out about bitcoin wayback 2017. But from what I heard to others, during this time there are many faucets that gives bitcoin for free. Earning 0.001btc is very easy that time so I think only few people bothers to buy it. And since it was not that popular that time, there is no reason for buying it. I think MT/Gox was the popular exchange during that time until the hacking incident happened in 2014. Many bitcoins were stolen from people and these reminded the crypto community to not store their cryptos on exchanges.

[adaseb]

If you wanted BTC back in 2013 or so you either had to go to a Bitcoin ATM or just buy a GPU and mine some LTC, or get an old BTC ASIC like an Antminer S1 and mine some that way. There was localbitcoins but you had to be in a really popular city to find people in your area who buy and sell BTC.

Another option was Paypal. Later they restricted this but in the early days you could just rent someone's hashpower and they would mine BTC for you and you would pay them by credit card. Basically you paid $100 and you in return got $80 worth mined back to your account. This was good because all you needed was a Paypal account and a credit card.

Selling crypto back to fiat was alot more difficult. Most Bitcoin ATMs were just one way and there was no way to sell your BTC back for fiat.

[JohnBitCo]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

We know that there was no binance at that time but there were other exchanges like Mt Gox and later poloniex was one of the biggest crypto exchange.
People use to buy/sell bitcoin and altcoins on these exchanges. Today there are so many exchanges for the spot (https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges) , dex (https://www.coingecko.com/en/dex) and derivatives (https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/derivatives).

[jack05]

Like around 2011 to 2015? Before it became available on major exchanges?

Initially it was person to person and later we saw exchanges coming up. Right now it's very easy to buy from exchanges but it has also compromised the anonymous nature of bitcoin. The real aim to bitcoin was p2p trading and no middlemen.